Prelude 1: Morning Gorecast
by Ellislash
Summary: Rochelle's Prelude: How did the survivors get Left 4 Dead in the first place? Coarse language, gore. I don't own anything Valve does.


"...are asking everyone to remain calm. This is Rochelle Pierre, channel 3 news." She gazed seriously into the camera while her tech counted three, then dropped her microphone.

"All right, then, that's it. We need to go." Jake the Cameraman fumbled with the lens cap, stowing his gear faster than she'd ever seen him do.

"We've got two more shots to take. That piece can't just be me staring at the screen. Don't worry, our chopper won't leave without us." She stripped her collared work blouse off from over her t-shirt and sighed in relief. Georgia humidity was _not_ her favorite thing in the world.

Jake's eyes bugged out at the suggestion. "Were you _listening_ to your own script? We shouldn't be out here at _all_ without gas masks, and like _hell_ I'm sticking around any longer!" He held out the camera bag. "_You_ take the shots. I'll wait in the bird, at the evac station on top of the hotel."

"Coward," Rochelle scolded as she took the heavy black case. "Go on back. I won't get _involved, _it's just two little shots. I'll meet you later - with a promotion in my pocket, after this story's finished." She was surprised to feel Jake grab her arm as she turned to go.

"Ro... Stay safe. Please." To her amazement, Jake's pale, thin face showed real concern. He drew her close and kissed her, oh so gently, mouth tasting of his morning caramel mocha. Before her lips could respond he pulled away, then hugged her fiercely.

"That's in case I never see you again," he whispered hoarsely, and fled down the street before Rochelle's brain could reboot itself.

_Well then_, she finally managed to think. _Out of left field, much_? She blinked, touching her lips with a finger. _Never see me again? __Overreacting.__ This isn't a warzone._ She made a mental note to follow up with this fascinating new development when she returned to the chopper.

The evacuations had started a week ago, but journalists hadn't been ordered out yet. Even if they had been, Rochelle would have stayed to get the story. No longer than necessary, of course, but she'd have refused to leave without a report. As it was, she wasted no time filming a nice pan across the highway, clogged with abandoned cars. The other shot she wanted was at the hospital across town.

_It's no crime if the owners aren't coming back_, she justified to herself, appropriating an abandoned Jeep with the keys still inside. _And it's not like I'll be keeping it_.

As soon as the engine revved, she knew she'd made a mistake. The street wasn't so abandoned as she'd thought. Growls, unrelated to her car's function, swelled in the heavy air. The bodies of those who'd been killed in the riots rose up from the ground. House doors opened and people - well, they _looked_ like people, kinda - stumbled outside. All of them focused on Rochelle's car, and charged.

"Oh god. Oh no no no no no no..." She threw down her camera and floored it, running over three "people" in the process. More woke up, following her progress down the street, chasing her car like some horribly twisted interpretation of the pied piper. _Oh shit, __Jake was right!_ Rochelle gave up on her shot of the hospital, and frantically changed course for the evac station. She was barely able to steer, her hands were shaking so bad, and her usual icy professional detachment became little more than a half-hearted suggestion.

Not two blocks later she encountered another problem. Several cars lay strewn across the road like they'd been tossed there by a cranky two-year-old. Her Jeep was too big to get past, but not big enough to smash the obstacles away.

"_Son _of a...!" She couldn't stop in time, and crashed headlong into the exposed undercarriage of a pickup truck. The airbag exploded in her face, nearly breaking her nose; and just to make matters worse, a car alarm started wailing. _Shit, __if horror movies are right __that'll just bring more of them!_ Rochelle threw open the door, grabbing her camera bag and leaping to the ground.

She turned to run but was jerked to a stop: a groaning, grotesque creature had seized the case she carried and was pulling her back. With a furious cry she tried to yank it out of the thing's hands, but it was terribly strong. Panicked and in despair, she gave up on her story. Thick black foam padding didn't keep the expensive equipment from crunching on the ground as she let go and ran.

_This can't be real_, a dazed and detached part of her moaned. Over and over: _this can't be real!_ A hazy red shock lay over jagged, ice-crystalline panic, forcing her breakfast up her throat. But there was no time to be sick. The car alarm would only distract them for so long; she had to get away, had to get to the hotel, had to get to Jake and the secret bottle of brandy she knew he kept in the chopper. She stumbled, her legs turning to water.

_Oh no you don't,_ her mother's voice sliced through her mind and made her smile. _You get right back up and teach those no-good mongrels what happens when they harass a lady_. She clenched her jaw. It was going to be just like high school. Only this time the stakes were a wee bit higher than the title of Prom Queen, and things were going to get a lot bloodier.

Rochelle bared her teeth and kept running, dodging walking corpses as they woke around her, until she saw an olive-green HumVee upside-down in the road. There was a dead soldier - the lower half of one, anyway - lying nearby, and under the foul maroon lake of drying blood she spotted a grenade. Blessing the inventor of rubber-soled shoes, she hung a hard right and scooped up the device without slowing. It was cylindrical and heavy and there was a sloppy bit of electronics stuck on near the fuse.

She could hear the growing pursuit, and was chilled to the bone by the roaring synthesis of a hundred sounds no human voice was ever meant to make. _There_! The stone wall of the courthouse loomed ahead. She struck the bomb's lighting mechanism and dropped the explosive in the street. It began to emit a loud, incessant beep, distracting Rochelle's bloodthirsty followers. _At least they've only got the attention span__s__ of goldfish,_ her beleaguered sense of humor saw fit to note. She dove around the corner, curled into a ball and clamped her hands over her ears as the pulse grew faster, the roar got louder, her heart beat like a downpour and she knew she was going going to die until finally

_BOOM_.

Echoing silence, red mist, intestines draped over everything like macabre party streamers. Rochelle crouched frozen behind the courthouse, disbelieving the quiet that settled into her bones. _I just killed them_. The blood trembled in her brain. _Sweet Jesus, I just killed them. What the hell am I doing here? _She wasn't breaking a story anymore; the camera, and her report, were destroyed. Rochelle couldn't think like a journalist any longer - she just had to escape.

The chopper. The hotel. She had to get to the hotel. Slowly, carefully, she found her feet. The movement required her to take a breath. The breath required her to empty her stomach.

When she became used to the stench and could inhale without gagging, she raised her eyes to the skyline. Thank god, the hotel wasn't all that far away, and she could see two - no, three rotors spinning lazily over the edge of the roof. As she watched, one started going faster than the others, then began to rise. Rochelle's heart stopped.

_No! He wouldn't!_ The big blue "3" on the side of the chopper flashed in the sun. The helicopter dropped low over the city, and she realized with relief that it was beginning a search pattern of the blocks around the hotel. They weren't leaving. She reached for her walkie-talkie, to let them know where she was, but cursed when her fingers touched her empty hip. She started to run.

The pilot stayed close to the hotel tower, circling. Rochelle ran as quietly as she could, only pausing briefly to liberate a bottle of water from an unlocked vehicle. She managed to avoid any more chase scenes.

_When I get home, I'm sticking to the traffic desk,_ Rochelle decided. _Overturned tractor-trailers on I-71 are much safer than this._ The more of Savannah she saw, the more she regretted being ambitious and taking the assignment. Green Flu was obviously more than just a really bad season, they'd known that even before the evacuations started, but this... She could never have been prepared for it.

_Thank you, Mr. Pizarro,_ she thought, grateful for her four years of high school track even though they'd never run any races like this. Quietly as she could, she did her old coach proud. In a matter of minutes she could see the hotel entrance just a block ahead, surrounded by yellow tape and a funnel of jersey barriers.

Rochelle looked up again, searching for her black angel, the bird that would take her away. Its deep _thokkathokkathokka_ made the air hum, but she couldn't see it.

Not paying attention to her feet nearly killed her.

"Look out!"

A big, balding man in a purple athletic shirt came barreling out of a side street, tackling a rabid plague victim that had been seconds from gouging Rochelle's eyes out. Her savior threw the creature to the ground and brought one heavy foot down, hard. The sickening crack nearly made her vomit again.

"Let's go! C'mon, now!" The older man grabbed her hand and pulled until she followed. She had no breath to thank him.

As they neared the hotel they saw two bright figures sprinting towards them, a baying pack of dark monsters close on their heels. Rochelle and her new friend held the hotel door for two more survivors, and slammed it behind them. A dozen hands started hammering and scratching at it not ten seconds later.

"Well all right, let's git ta them whirlybirds!" declared one of the new pair. He was young (_really cute, too,_ Rochelle caught herself thinking), wore a mechanic's coveralls and a blue trucker hat, and for some inexplicable reason seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. He made a beeline for the emergency staircase. The other man, dark-haired and in a blindingly white suit spattered with blood, grimaced.

"Helicopters. They are _called _helicopters." His accent marked him as a northerner.

The three of them followed the young man to the bleak, squared-off concrete spiral that led to the roof. It was a dishearteningly long climb.

"Who the hell... puts an evac station... up thirty flights a'god-damned stairs?" the man in the purple shirt panted when they were partway up. Rochelle, being younger and quite fit, had no trouble breezing by.

On her way past she heard the fourth survivor tease, "C'mon, coach. Maybe the helicopter, maybe it's made of chocolate." She stifled a giggle. Purple-Shirt _was_ a bit heavy, but thirty-something White-Suit wasn't exactly flying, either. She and Trucker-Hat, quite a ways ahead, paused on a landing to wait for the older men. They looked out over the city through the narrow window-slit, breathing a little easier for a moment. But only a moment. As Rochelle watched the News-3 helicopter come into view around the building, a cloud of dust and debris was visible on the street. It looked... wrong. Wrong-er than anything she'd seen yet in this godforsaken town. And it was moving.

"Ho-lee _shit_..." breathed Trucker-Hat.

"Oh god, NO!" Rochelle tried to force herself through the glass of the window, as if she could stop the horror outside. "No, no, no, JAKE!"

From the center of the dust she saw a huge... _thing_, a monster, pluck a car off the street and send it flying. It was a forest-green Subaru - she'd remember that detail for the rest of her life. The chopper couldn't get out of the way; its blades spun into the airborne automobile and twisted like old aluminum foil. A military-grade _Sikorsky_ couldn't stay in flight if something even as small and stupid as a _crow_ got stuck in its rotor; her little news chopper didn't stand a chance. It spiraled out of control and plummeted from the sky. She felt the building shake from the crash, and saw flames begin to consume the surrounding area. The flames became a blaze, and a wave of orange destruction advanced on the hotel.

"Come on. The evac, it's waiting," panted White-Suit on his way past. He hadn't seen the crash, and didn't spare a glance for Rochelle's distress. Trucker-Hat finally grabbed her arm as Purple-Shirt neared them, forcing himself up the stairs.

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but we gotta move!" The young man resumed his ascent, leaping three steps at a time. Rochelle let shock numb her grief and followed, soon dashing gracefully past all three men. Her face felt stretched over her skull, too tight to allow for any expression. She had to believe that Jake had stayed on the roof, that only the pilot went out to look for her. An evil whisper in her heart exposed that belief as the false hope it was.

She burst out the roof access and into bright sun, but no wind. _Why is there no wind? Those choppers should __be blowing like a hurricane__!_ She fished desperately for any explanation that contradicted the damning evidence of her eyes: both H-92s were slowly disappearing into the west, putting Savannah astern and leaving four people behind to die. Rochelle's body began to shake. There was a high-pitched buzzing in her ears.

"Hey, where is everybody?" demanded Trucker-Hat, close behind her. He cupped his hand to his mouth and hollered. "_Hellooo! _Anyone here?"

"This isn't happening," Rochelle repeated to herself. It couldn't be. It was a nightmare, she'd wake up any second..." This isn't happening, this isn't happening..."

The two others emerged from the stairwell and caught their breaths. They glared after the departing helicopters, angry and in shock.

"Aren't they supposed to be savin' our asses?" demanded Purple-Shirt. Trucker-Hat stared despondently over the city, all the excitement gone out of him. White-Suit, bracing himself on his knees, looked up. His face promised a world of pain for whomever he decided to hold responsible for this. Even short on breath, his sarcastic voice carried all the resignation of a meteor about to destroy every last bit of life on Earth. It was flinty, cold, and sent chills through Rochelle's heart.

"Looks like there's been a change of plans."


End file.
